The Creator’s Image

Amanda Jump

In my early twenties, I began writing about a girl named Sunny in what I thought would be my first novel. I found my inspiration for her name (also to be the book title) from Frank Sinatra’s song by the same title. I loved that song. I listened to it in the car, in my house, and at work – on repeat. That first attempt at a novel floated along nostalgic and sorrowful chords about identity and the fumbling of girlish insecurities in a young woman’s world (though that’s not what the song is about at all). The fumbled attempt abruptly ended – sufficiently absorbed in its own melancholy – on the sunny day it first dawned on me that I had outgrown my own theme. That was when I realized writing a novel would require more than a few whimsical notes of an inspiring song. 😉